Hondurans Show Bodies, Equipment To Reporters

CAPIRE, HONDURAS — The Honduran army Thursday produced five corpses and a small cache of weapons that it said proved Nicaraguan armed forces had crossed into Honduran territory.

However, the display did not resolve the question of exactly how many Sandinista troops had entered Honduras in what informed sources contend was the largest such incursion in the five-year-old war between Nicaragua`s leftist Sandinista regime and the U.S.-backed rebels.

Reporters were shown the bodies and equipment at this tiny outpost six miles north of the Nicaraguan border and about 100 miles east of the Honduran capital of Tegucigalpa.

Honduran army Lt. Col. Danilo Carbajal said troops of the Honduran Sixth Infantry Battalion had killed the Sandinista soldiers and seized the weapons and other items on display. He said that ``fortunately`` Honduran forces had suffered no casualties.

But informed sources insisted the Nicaraguan soldiers had been killed and the equipment captured by Contras, who turned them over to the Hondurans after several days of heavy fighting in the area.

Sandinista casualties have been put at 200 killed, while the Contras were said to have had 40 killed and 100 injured.

The Honduran government officially denies the presence of the Contras in Honduras, where the 18,000 rebels maintain camps and training bases. Those facilities were the apparent target of a Sandinista force that launched several attacks over the weekend and penetrated as far as 11 miles inside Honduras.

In Nicaragua, the defense ministry Thursday released a statement saying Sandinista troops had destroyed the ``principal training camp`` of the rebels and that heavy fighting was taking place in the ``Honduran-Nicaraguan border territory.`` The release of the communique marked the first time the Nicaraguan government had made a public statement on the situation without denying the presence of Sandinista troops in Honduras.

It is widely known that the main rebel training camp, called the Center for Military Instruction, is in Honduran territory. The statement also said Sandinista troops had ``destroyed other important enemy camps`` and ``made useless various means of (rebel) transport, including a helicopter.``

Despite assertions that the Honduran military maintains close relations with the Contras, perhaps even providing some logistical and other support, Carbajal said he knew of no Contras in the area.

A short distance over a nearby hill, however, reporters straying from a press pool encountered more than a dozen armed men, some wearing the dark blue uniform of the largest Contra faction, the Nicaraguan Democratic Force.

They acknowledged they were FDN guerrillas, and several civilians in the area gave their nationalities as Nicaraguan. They said there had been heavy fighting in the area over the last few days.

Moreover, although officials described the one-building mountain compound here as a Honduran military facility, usually reliable sources described it as a Contra camp.

Gen. John Galvin, commander of the U.S. southern command in Panama, visited the outpost and said the U.S. airlift, using 50 Army fliers and 14 Army helicopters, was completed without incident.

The bodies, two of which showed signs of violent death, were clad in the camouflage uniforms of elite Sandinista counterinsurgency battalions.

The Honduran army was airlifted into the area, known as the Las Vegas Salient, officially to ``repel the invaders.``

Hovever, informed sources said only a few stragglers from the original Sandinista force were thought to be still in the area, with the balance either killed, captured, or having retreated to Nicaragua.

The apparent victory of the 6,000 Contras in the Salient region over the rocket-, artillery- and helicopter-backed Sandinistas has left the Contras ``flying extremely high,`` one source said.